I Think It Started with Butterflies
by riderwritergirl
Summary: Perhaps it was her penchant for butterflies that drew her to this girl...or perhaps it was simply meant to be. (When Batty Fell in Love rewritten due to format issues)
1. It Started with Butterflies

_When Batty fell in love, it was different from the times her sisters had fallen in love. _

She wasn't Rosiland who had jumped from boy to boy during her middle school and high school career before settling down with Tommy for a blissfully happy senior year. Graduation had come and gone, however, and they had drifted apart; Rosiland to Oregon to study women's history and Tommy to the Air force recruiter's office. They had kept in touch, as much as Tommy's extensive traveling and busy schedule allowed, delaying the inevitable for years. Now Tommy was home, for good this time, they had been married and the first Penderwick-Gieger grandchild was expected in the spring.

She most definitely not Skye, stubbornly refusing for years to even acknowledge the fact that she was a girl for nearly two decades, then after finally grudgingly accepting her femininity, making the decision that she and Jeffery should really just give everyone what they wanted. That little experiment had lasted all of two months before the two decided they were in no way compatible and had an amicable break-up over ice-cream sundaes. Nearly another decade later, Skye and Jeffery were still quite content as best friends, and very much in love with their own significant others. Or in Skye's case, still very successfully putting up with a fellow physics major. (She had decided in the long run that astrophysics, while incredibly fascinating, was not incredibly helpful when it came to doing good on Earth.)

And heaven forbid, anyone think she fell in love like Jane, who twirled from one romance to another as she did with everything else with her life. For now she was anchored, living in Cape Cod in a tiny studio with her best friend Emily and drawing young men to her like sirens on the rocks. She was decidedly single at the moment, but very Zen about her last break-up, which she cheerfully called, "the most horrific mistake to ever befall mankind." Thus far, she seemed to enjoy the solitude and had even admitted to Batty during their last phone conversation that not having responsibility of brushing her hair or color coordinating her skirts and blouses for someone else had been quite freeing.

_When Batty fell in love, it hadn't resembled her sisters' romances at all. _

She didn't do much twirling for one. It wasn't that she didn't enjoy twirling, but her tendency to trip over her own feet made such endeavors quite dangerous. And for another she was off across the ocean in Ireland working with horses. Far away from her family and everything familiar, terribly homesick at times, but enjoying herself immensely.

She adored every moment of it. Pounding gallops down the coast or hacks through the dew soaked meadows. Rainy days under cover in the indoor arena practicing half-passes, shoulder-ins and passage and sunny days out on the cross-country course schooling over ditches. She treasured quiet afternoons cleaning tack in the barns with the other girls, giggling over the latest gossip and sometimes frustrating sessions attempting to teach her filly to canter on the lunge line without throwing a fit or bareback swims in the frigid water with steady bay gelding.

_Most of all, she loved it, because she had someone to share all of it with. _

Her name was Nella and she was unlike anything Batty had ever considered, and yet everything she had ever unknowingly wanted. Perhaps it was her penchant for butterflies that drew her to this girl (Nella had a butterfly tattooed on the inside of her right ankle.), or her wild independent spirit. Maybe it had been the laughter that bubbled so often from her lips as they rode through the wind-swept meadows together or the musical lilt of her voice as she spoke in soothing whispers to the stray pup they had found on a frigid wet Wednesday in the beginning of October. There was a possibility it could have been the passion they both shared for dressage and its painful, frustrating intricacy or that grimy tack made their blood boil at the same temperature.

Batty couldn't pinpoint what it was about Nella that made her feel as if a hundred butterflies were trapped in her chest and caused her cheeks to flame red, but she hadn't argued when the girl took matters into her own hands and kissed her. "I hope you'll kiss me back at some point." She had told her, hands still cupped around her face. "If you don't, I might burst."

It was from there they had gone forward, fumbling around and tripping up as every young couple does. Nella's cat had attacked Batty the first time she had spent the night in her tiny little flat, although the attack had been so incredible that it had left Batty more amazed than angry. How the cat had managed to hide itself behind the toaster and had leap onto her head while she had been making tea had kept them both laughing for months afterwards. Then there had been the attempt to teach Nella to play the piano, which gone only slightly better than Jeffery's attempt with Skye, minus an angry Mrs. Tifton, a chaotic fort and stone animal statues from Africa.

They had kept at it, making mistakes and accidentally doing things right. Until suddenly they realized nearly an entire year had gone by. The earth had made almost one full revolution around the sun and they were still side by side.

_It was then that Batty realized that nothing had made her fall in love with Nella. They had fallen in love, because they were meant to be._


	2. I May be Crazy, Probably Insane

Batty sighed softly, squirming in the uncomfortable airplane seat. The flight from Dublin to Boston was roughly six-and-a-half hours, depending on wind speed, takeoff and landing, was painful enough and now with weather delays she was seriously considering giving skydiving a try. None of the passengers around her seemed to share her inability to sleep of planes, Nella included, as the cabin was filled with the sounds of heavy breathing and the occasional quiet snore. It wasn't that flying scared her. No, after Skye's lengthy lecture about aerodynamics, thrust and drag roughly six years ago Batty had decided she didn't actually care about airplanes; whether they were soaring through the clouds or plummeting from 30,000 feet at an alarming speed.

What really bothered her about flying was being in such close proximity to so many people. She hated to admit it, as she made it her goal to never make snap judgments, but the little voice inside kept telling her that everyone on the plane had some sort of cold or other infectious disease that she would come down with the moment she disembarked. The only person the little voice excluded from its endless repetition was Nella obviously as she lived with her, slept beside her and regularly touched her lips to hers and therefore would have been well aware of any diseases she might have had. Everyone else probably had some sort of incurable mixture of the stomach flu, strep throat, meningitis and the common cold with a weird fungal infection to go along with it. Or maybe she was simply going insane.

…

**If you don't understand how a woman could both love her sister dearly and want to wring her neck at the same time, then you were probably an only child. ~Linda Sunshine**

The root cause of Batty's insanity was the fact that the airplane she was still considering jumping out of was headed for her hometown and she was terrified. Now she finally understood how nerve-wracking it had been for her sisters to bring all those boys over for dinner throughout the years. At the time when her sisters had been old enough to date and still live at home, Batty had been much too young to really understand why bringing a boy over for dinner for dinner could cause so much anxiety. She and Ben had simply exchanged sly smiles and nudges as they battled to contain their hysterics.

Jane had probably been the most entertaining, as an impending introduction of a "significant other" sent her rushing around the house in an uncharacteristic attack of tidiness. An attempt to vacuum an elderly Hound during his afternoon nap was still one of Batty's most treasured memories. The poor dog had been so traumatized by the experience that until the end of his days he had refused to sleep anywhere but Batty's closet with her various stuffed animals as his guardians.

Now Batty was beginning to realize that her sisters' terror had not been funny at all. In fact, it was quite un-funny when you were experiencing it for yourself for the first time. It was downright scary. If only she had taken the time to instruct her siblings on the least humiliating course of action before obeying the flight attendant's instruction to turn off all electrical devices. Unfortunately, she had been more focused on dragging a very sleepy Nella out the door and racing to tie her shoes while getting her passport stamped and bags checked at the same time.

She would just have to hope that Skye had perhaps spent the entire train ride from Manhattan to Boston being flirted with, so she would have used up all her glares before dinner time came around. Maybe she would be lucky enough that Ben would, at least for one night, stifle the urge to not socialize with anyone he was even slightly related to (by blood or marriage) and disappear to his room or a friend's house as quickly as humanly possible. Although, Nella had a younger brother about the same age as Ben, so Batty doubted the disappearing would offend her, but spouting Latin phrases and Sabrina Starr references would definitely be at least slightly off-putting. She would just have to hope Mick Hart wouldn't once again make an appearance.

"Hey," Nella's soft voice and her hand on her arm interrupted her thoughts, "have you slept at all?" Batty shook her head.

"I can't sleep on planes."

"Why not?"

"There's just something about sitting in a metal tube surrounded by sick people that makes me a little uncomfortable."

Nella laughed quietly and squeezed her hand, "And yet you picked thorns out of your horse's tongue with your bare hands." She teased her. "Why don't you tell me about your family instead of panicking over the ways they are going to humiliate you later today?"

"How did you know I was doing that?"

Nella rolled her eyes. "Please, I have heart palpitations each time my mum suggests we come round for dinner."

"But I love your family!" Batty protested. "Everyone is so nice and sweet. I don't think anything-, "Nella interrupted her, rolling her eyes.

"Batty, my mum knits dog sweaters and my brother sits on the couch in his underwear writing papers for school. My dad has in depth discussions about life with our Pekinese over tea, in German no less. No matter how crazy your family is, I don't think it will change the way I feel about you. If you can handle my family's insanity, I think I can handle yours." After a moment's pause she added, "And if they really are too crazy, an entire ocean will separate us for most the time."

Batty laughed quietly, so as to not wake the other (most likely sick) passengers and smiled gratefully at Nella her anxiety beginning to fade slightly. "Thanks." She told her. "It just, this is a really big deal. I've never brought anyone home to meet my family before and I'm on the verge of hyperventilating, because-"

"Because I'm another woman?" Nella interrupted her.

"No. NO! My family doesn't care about that, but I'm the baby of the family. I mean Ben is actually the youngest, but I've always been the littlest sister. Even Hound, our dog, was a year older than me. And although I'm an adult now, my sisters still in some ways see me as the shy little four-year-old I used to be. They've been incredibly supportive of everything I've done in life, but I'm not sure if they realize that I'm not a little girl anymore."

"And the fact that you are suddenly bringing your girlfriend home with you is a bit of a wake-up call to your sisters that you are actually an adult, just like they are." Nella finished for her.

"Exactly." Batty sighed.

"Well, I promise to try and act as mature and adult-like as possible."

"Don't even think about it." Batty warned, leaning over to kiss her. "I forbid you from trying to be anything but yourself."

_As she rested her head against Nella's shoulder, Batty began to wonder if sleeping on planes was perhaps not as difficult as she imagined. _

…


	3. Not One for Cities

**Logan International Airport Boston, MA 9:00 AM **

"It's so…busy." Nella had stopped dead in her tracks staring at the hustle and bustle of Boston spread out before her. As she turned to face Batty, her blue eyes were wide in amazement, "You lived here, for two entire years?"

"Yep," Batty told her cheerfully, "and I loved every minute of it."

It was true. Batty adored the remote, wet and untamed green of her home in Ireland, but in the two years she had lived in Boston, she had come to appreciate the city and nearly everything that came along with it. She had yet to find anything quite like the quiet thrill of walking down the brightly lit streets at night as snow fell softly, muffling her footsteps to soft crunching noises and slowly chilling her from the outside in. Nothing had ever tasted quite as good as meals she had her roommate Talia had cooked with the plants they had grown somewhat illegally on the fire escape- a taste of green in the heart of the city. It had always filled her heart with joy to watch her horse (Maximillian, but Maxim for short) run; bucking, leaping and crow-hopping across the pasture when she came to turn him out a day spent in his stall.

"I cannot believe you had a car here." Nella said still, sounding slightly amazed. Batty pursed her lips, remembering one of her not-so-favorite things about Boston.

"Sometimes I can't either." She answered. "The traffic is terrible, finding a parking place is near to impossible and it's ridiculously expensive."

"Not to mention, when you loan your car to a horseback rider for a two weeks, it quickly becomes filled with hay, dirt and of pieces of leather that really should be replaced, but are superglued and duct-taped together instead." A teasing voice added behind them, a voice all too familiar to Batty. She spun around, accidentally on purpose dragging Nella with her, to come face-to–face with the brown hair, green eyes and freckles of one of her best friends in the whole world.

"Jeffery, I've missed you!" She exclaimed, dropping Nella's hand to tackle him in a hug. "How are you?"

"I've missed you too, Battykins, but please let go of me before my lungs collapse." Expertly, Jeffery untangled himself from her grasp and held her at arm's length, looking her up and down. After a moment he smiled, he corners of his eyes crinkling and the green irises flooding with brotherly affection. "Gorgeous as always, but seriously that tackle could rival Skye at her best. Maybe _you_ should consider hockey." Batty rolled her eyes.

"Daddy would die if I even joked about that. He thinks horses are dangerous enough." She told him matter-of-factly as she moved closer to Nella who had been hanging back, watching the exchange with a quiet interest.

"Jeffery, this is Nella, my girlfriend. Nella, this is Jeffrey, one of my oldest friends and an honorary Penderwick."

They shook hands briefly, Nella's hand quickly falling back to her side. If Jeffrey had noticed the tiny vine of green leaves and pink flowers inked on the creamy white inside of her wrist he gave no sign of it. He simply smiled again and asked, "Ready to brave the traffic?"

…

Two hours later, Batty sat in the backseat of Jeffrey's car watching as the scenery of her childhood whipped past. The grey highway stretched ahead of them, the ribbon of bright yellow paint streaming down its center. Jeffrey was right. She had sort of ruined his car. In the seams of the tan leather seats remnants of green hay dust still remained and there was a definite horsey undertone to the woody smell of musical instruments that seemed to be infused within the upholstery. Poking out from beneath the driver's seat was a bit, Maxim's favorite bit, that Batty had spent hours scouring the internet in an attempt to replace. The stupid thing had cost more than she cared to admit to replace and Maxim had ended up hating the replacement anyway.

In the front seat, Jeffrey had managed to charm away Nella's usual shyness and the two were chatting as the Massachusetts countryside continued to rush past the window. "So Nella, this is your first time coming to Massachusetts, right? What do you think of it so far?" Jeffrey was asking as he expertly changed lanes to get out of the way of a red Mercedes that was clearly trying to break the speed of sound. Nella hesitated, glancing back to offer Batty an apologetic look."

"I already hate Boston. Don't take it personally, but I'm not really one for cities. I'm sure it's really lovely, but I like places where I can hear my thoughts."

Jeffrey chuckled softly, taking his eyes off the road for a moment to smile at her, the corners of his warm green eyes crinkling. "Then you will love Quigley Woods. It's grown back since the days of Nick's all-terrain drills and incredibly peaceful unless the cross-country team happens to be practicing."

"I forgot about Nick's drills!" Batty exclaimed with a laugh. "I remember when he and Tommy came over to babysit when Daddy went on one of those awful blind dates and he made us run drills in the backyard. Rosy was so mad. I think she called Tommy an oaf and the tackled him."

"Well, the joke's on her now, because she married the oaf and I think Tommy's wheels can move faster than her feet." Jeffrey said with a small smile.

"I'm sorry," Nella interrupted suddenly, "but I think I'm missing something here. Who exactly is this oaf named Tommy?"

"My brother-in-law, he grew up next door to us. He and Rosalind dated in high school, but went their separate ways after graduation. Tommy joined the Air Force and Rosalind went off to college. Then about five years ago, Tommy was in a car accident and he ended up paralyzed from about the waist down. They started dating a few months later and got married last year." Batty explained quickly. In time Nella would hear the whole story of how Tommy and Rosalind had actually gotten together, but it would take hours to provide a detailed explanation.

"And they are going to have a baby next month." Jeffery added.

"What about blind dates? If it means going on a date with a blind person, then I can tell you, it isn't that different from a date with a sighted person. I dated a boy who was blind in school and he was lovely."

Jeffery laughed, not unkindly as he explained, "It means going on a date with someone you've never met before, but I like your definition better. I've been on a few blind dates in my time and hated every moment of it."


End file.
